Sarah Guo

Background

Sarah Guo is the founder and general partner of Conviction, an AI-native venture capital firm she launched in October 2022 ¹. Before founding Conviction, Guo spent nearly a decade at Greylock Partners, where she joined as an associate at age 26 in 2013 and was promoted to general partner in her late twenties, becoming one of the youngest GPs in the firm’s history ²³.

Guo grew up in Wisconsin, New Jersey, and New England ⁴. Her parents were engineers at Bell Labs who went on to found Casa Systems, a cable and telecom infrastructure startup that competed with Cisco and Ericsson and went public in 2017 ²³. She attended Phillips Academy before earning a BA, BS, MBA, and MA from the University of Pennsylvania and its Wharton School ³⁵.

Before entering venture capital, Guo worked at Goldman Sachs in banking and growth investing, where she advised clients including Dropbox, Netflix, Nvidia, Workday, and Zynga ³⁵.

During her tenure at Greylock (2013-2022), Guo led investments in over 40 companies across software, fintech, security, and AI ². Notable Greylock investments she led include Demisto (acquired by Palo Alto Networks), Sqreen (acquired by Datadog), Coda, Baseten, Cleo, Common Room, Shortcut, and Remotion ⁵⁶.

Conviction’s first fund raised $101 million in 2022, with Guo serving as the largest LP ¹. In January 2025, the firm closed its second fund at $230 million and added Mike Vernal, formerly a partner at Sequoia Capital, as general partner ⁷. The firm has 8 employees ².

Guo co-hosts the “No Priors” podcast with Elad Gil, exploring frontier AI topics ⁴. She delivered a TED AI talk in San Francisco in 2025 and has over 119,000 followers on X ².

Stated Thesis

(Self-reported: These represent what Guo says publicly about her approach. See Inferred Thesis for analysis of actual investment behavior.)

Conviction describes itself as an “AI-Native” investing firm focused on “Software 3.0” companies ⁸. The firm believes “we are extremely early in the translation of powerful AI models to powerful products that transform industries” ⁸.

Guo has articulated several core investing principles:

• AI as leverage multiplier: “AI exponentially increases individual leverage, and the advantage goes toward small, aligned teams” ⁴.

• Intellectual honesty as edge: “Intellectual honesty is rare and decisive. If you are willing to tolerate uncomfortable tension in the pursuit of truth, that compounds better than baseline talent” ⁴.

• Fast iteration over correct theory: “Fast feedback beats correct theory. Meeting the market helps you converge faster than ideas that start out ~right but update slowly” ⁴.

• Judgment matters: Guo has stated she is “pretty traditionalist” in viewing venture as a services business, and rejects the notion that success is purely “access and a random draw” ².

• Priors don’t apply: One of Guo’s big beliefs about AI investing is that “many of your existing beliefs about markets don’t make sense anymore” and that “you are much more likely to find the truth if you are curious and willing to be wrong” ⁹.

Conviction invests at seed and Series A stages with check sizes of $1M to $25M, often as the first institutional investor ⁸.

Inferred Thesis

Based on 22 verified investments below (12 at Conviction, 10 at Greylock):

Stage focus: - Predominantly seed and Series A, consistent with stated focus ⁸ - At Greylock, invested across a broader range including later stages ⁶

Sector concentration (of 22 verified investments): - AI/ML applications: 10 companies (45%) — Harvey, Mistral, Sierra, Cognition, HeyGen, Baseten, Cartesia, Ideogram (via a16z connection), Sola, Sunday Robotics ⁸² - Enterprise software & developer tools: 6 companies (27%) — Coda, Common Room, Shortcut, Remotion, Onyx, Corridor ⁶⁸ - Security/infrastructure: 4 companies (18%) — Demisto, Sqreen, Obsidian, Material Security ⁶ - Other (HR, fintech): 2 companies (9%) — Cleo, Utmost ⁶

Conviction-era concentration: Since founding Conviction in 2022, the portfolio has been almost exclusively AI-focused, representing a sharper sector focus than her Greylock years, which spanned software, security, and fintech ²⁸.

Portfolio company valuations: Conviction’s portfolio includes several breakout AI companies: Harvey ($3B valuation), Mistral AI ($6B), Baseten ($825M), and Sierra ($4.5B) ².

Founder profile patterns: Guo seeks founders with deep technical expertise and domain knowledge who “move fast” ⁸. Her portfolio skews toward technical founders building AI-native products rather than applying AI as a feature ².

Geographic focus: Primarily San Francisco Bay Area, with notable exception of Mistral AI (Paris) ⁸.

Co-investor patterns: Conviction frequently co-invests with other AI-focused funds. Mike Vernal’s addition (ex-Sequoia) signals institutional cross-pollination ⁷.

Notable gaps: Despite Greylock-era investments in fintech and consumer, Conviction’s portfolio has no consumer or fintech companies — the firm has narrowed exclusively to AI infrastructure and applications ⁸.

Portfolio

Conviction Portfolio (2022-present)

Greylock Portfolio (2013-2022)

Note: Many investment years are approximated from founding year proxies. This table represents a subset of Guo’s total investments; at Greylock she led or co-led 40+ deals ².

In Their Own Words

“Entrepreneurship and competition are the only engines we have found that reliably produce progress, and we still need a lot more of it.” — Sarah Guo, personal website ⁴

“AI exponentially increases individual leverage, and the advantage goes toward small, aligned teams.” — Sarah Guo, personal website ⁴

“People act when they have ownership, consequences, and upside.” — Sarah Guo, personal website ⁴

“I don’t care a lot about scale and power… They care about trust and understanding.” — Sarah Guo, Fortune interview, April 2025 ²

“You are much more likely to find the truth if you are curious and willing to be wrong.” — Sarah Guo, on AI investing in 2025 ⁹

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials found. Guo’s personal website references founder testimonials, but specific attributed quotes from portfolio founders could not be independently verified from public sources.

Sources